Rush Limbaugh on Jobs

Conservative Talk-show Host

Public union vote is like Tony Soprano's lead pipe beating

Limbaugh regards the government as a kind of mob family under Obama: "Tony Soprano has taken over the US government and the private sector is an opposing family. He's going to wipe it out."

The radio host must have been a big fan of The Sopranos, because he relies on the mob metaphor for a lot of his stories. He explained the impact of the Employee Free Choice Act in this way: "You are a small business employee.
Your boss has a shop that is not union. After this legislation passes, one day
Tony Soprano will walk in, with a lead pipe, and he will start beating people upside the head to vote to unionize, because you cannot vote in private."

FactCheck: No, 2010 mine deaths not related to union status

Limbaugh has a lot of peculiar ideas about unions. When a union doesn't exist, Limbaugh simply makes one up to serve as a punching bag. After the 2010 Massey Energy disaster killed 29 coal miners in West Virginia, he immediately blamed the
unions for failing to protect workers at the nonunion mine. After getting e-mails that pointed out he was wrong, he refused to relent.
Citing a 2009 case where Massey Energy was ordered to rehire 85 coal miners who had been discriminated against for joining a union, Limbaugh claimed, "So there were union workers there, and so the United Mine Workers should have been overseeing their
safety."

On this challenge of fact, Limbaugh was completely wrong. The case of the 85 coal miners was at a different mine, and there is absolutely no doubt that the mine where 29 people died had no union.

1980s tax cuts created jobs by “trickle down”

Here are some of the nitty-gritty details about what really happened in the so-called “Decade of Greed.”

Average real family income grew by well over 15% from 1982 to 1989.

For the poorest fifth of Americans, real income grew almost 12%.

The
proverbial misery index took a nosedive: We experienced sustained economic growth without inflation, low unemployment, and low interest rates.

Some 20 million new jobs were created, 82% of which were in higher-skilled occupations.

The 1980s was a
decade of greatly increased personal and corporate charitable giving.

Cuts in marginal tax rates spur economic growth by providing entrepreneurs an incentive to invest their marginal tax dollars, causing many of them to earn more money and pay
more taxes on their earnings, albeit at a lower marginal rate, and create new jobs. These new jobs result in a bigger employment base and, thus, more taxpayers. More taxpayers translates into higher tax revenues-even at lower marginal rates.